City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Merits Redside vs Blueside Arcs.

BadBad_Girl

By BadBad_Girl,
Posted on: 2009-12-28 09:26 in CoH and CoV General Discussions

 

Posted

I don't have too much issue with the current formula for merits, per se. Redside arcs really are a lot faster... someone mentioned arcs like the Freaklympics, etc. blueside, but those take a LOT longer than most arcs redside. I'm generally surprised when the merits pop up on my villains, as I always expect the arc to go on for longer.

Really, the things that MIGHT hold it up are the need to unlock contacts (which I really don't like... I don't enjoy the generic paper/radio missions, and hate having to do them to unlock contacts), and that there are only so many story arcs per level range.

For those touting the merit counts for Posi and Synapse, I suppose it's nice if you're a farmer. If not, I'll take any of the newer TFs, redside TFs, etc. If your only motivation to do Posi is the merits, that's a problem, in my book. The Task Force has far too many filler missions and is quite long and boring to play. I do it once on characters needing the Task Force Commander accolade, and that's it.

Guide: Tanking, Wall of Fire Style (Updated for I19!), and the Four Rules of Tanking
Story Arc: Belated Justice, #88003
Synopsis: Explore the fine line between justice and vengeance as you help a hero of Talos Island bring his friend's murderer to justice.
Grey Pilgrim: Fire/Fire Tanker (50), Victory

 

Posted

I think is weird how poor design dictates merits. Also i miss eden trials and katies

 

Posted

You forget something. Blueside has really crappy experience/inf bonuses for arc complete. That's one thing that really struck me as I've been doing the unnaturally long blueside missions. Sure, the Hero's Hero arc is long as hell and gives 35 merits, but apparently it's only worth 165000 bonus XP at level 48. Over on red, arcs with hal;f the missions get the full 235000 at level 48.

 

Posted

My regular teammates and I have the Posi down to a hour & four minutes, The Synapse and Sister roughly an hour & 15. We cannot WAIT for Going Rogue.. we are pretty certain we can get a Posi down to under 40-45 minutes. At that point, my villains won't have any merit worries again.



"Well, there's going to be some light music and a short note of apology saying, 'The universe ended last week, we're really sorry, we don't know what you're doing here, didn't you get the message?'"- Steve Moffat

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by uberschveinen View Post
You forget something. Blueside has really crappy experience/inf bonuses for arc complete. That's one thing that really struck me as I've been doing the unnaturally long blueside missions. Sure, the Hero's Hero arc is long as hell and gives 35 merits, but apparently it's only worth 165000 bonus XP at level 48. Over on red, arcs with hal;f the missions get the full 235000 at level 48.
Not 100% True.

Do what I did, Do your Galaxy/Atlas Story arcs, go to The Hollows, then Faultline, Then Striga(the first 2 gave really good XP, sorta slows a little in Striga), Then Croatoa(Then when I notice the gap of XP per mission, but team of 8 can still rack up great XP in it), then RWZ & P.I. Arcs where you can.

Me & my crew can chew through to 50 very fast these days on blueside, just doing that, sprinkle in random TF, like Ernesto Hess(we like that one), I.T.F., etc... Blueside still makes more Merits, Overall better XP because of more folks to team with, More Salvage/Recipes, Better value on the market. (We seeing a trend here?) Plus ya'll don't have deal with Longbow, Arachnos, Legacy Chain, Wyvern, Scrapyarders, Rogue Arachnos, & the P.P.D.
Then throw in C.o.S., Malta, K.o.A., C.o.T. & Heroes everywhere, well..

Its rough redside


JJ

I delete more 50s, then you'll ever have.
http://www.pandora.com/people/jjdemon

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Knightslayer View Post
Hmm, one thing i forgot about Blueside arcs... friggin' defeat 65* [whatever is hard to find in the zone] missions! >.<


* Ok, actually it scales - the 65 is an example from a lvl 45-50 arc i recently did

While that's true very few arcs have multiple defeat X(group) in them though I'm sure there are some that do. And While heroes are doing that defeat X, villaisn are doing 5x newspaper (mostl ikely defeat boss/grab glowie) and in those 5x newspaper villains are defeating an equal amount of enemies to those hunts, which adds playtime that doesn't count towards merits.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Grey Pilgrim View Post
I don't have too much issue with the current formula for merits, per se. Redside arcs really are a lot faster... someone mentioned arcs like the Freaklympics, etc. blueside, but those take a LOT longer than most arcs redside. I'm generally surprised when the merits pop up on my villains, as I always expect the arc to go on for longer.

Really, the things that MIGHT hold it up are the need to unlock contacts (which I really don't like... I don't enjoy the generic paper/radio missions, and hate having to do them to unlock contacts), and that there are only so many story arcs per level range.

For those touting the merit counts for Posi and Synapse, I suppose it's nice if you're a farmer. If not, I'll take any of the newer TFs, redside TFs, etc. If your only motivation to do Posi is the merits, that's a problem, in my book. The Task Force has far too many filler missions and is quite long and boring to play. I do it once on characters needing the Task Force Commander accolade, and that's it.
I would buy the differences in missions( more travel required, generally more, and a greater frequency of hunt mish), except we the difference in merits in post-Strygia missions as well, and post Strygia content is similar to that of redside.

Really what I think many of us would like if for future issue for them just clean up a lot of that pre-strygia stuff, change it to the same standard as the post stuff, redo some of the early TF's( lets be honest here, Positron TF is pretty painful) and standardize merit reward amount, or at the very least tie merit rewards to mission complete XP rather than time complete

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wooden_Replica View Post
or at the very least tie merit rewards to mission complete XP rather than time complete
That... is not going to happen. Because the amount of time needed for the merits is what players tend to go by, and that is what was wrong with the system before merits (Dr. Quarterfield or Positron netted the same reward as a Katie Hannon TF).

Personally, I like the change. I see people playing a large variety of TFs and being interested in playing different ones- much more so than before the change. Even Katie Hannon gets some attention, even though that TF arguably nets less merits than it should because of past farming.

The shortcoming for villainside (if there is that big of one) is that there is less content to choose from, so you could run out of arcs to run before you outlevel a range (I haven't been having that issue with mine, though), also meaning you could get less merits overall in that level range than blueside.

One other thought seen in this thread is people saying how fast they finish a TF. Anecdotal player evidence is never going to fly for some of these, as... yeah, it's anecdotal. Farm teams will probably be able to lower the time dramatically, but we don't have the data to see what the average times are and to balance the merits out.

Heck, my times on TFs can flucutate a lot, too. I would want the time I ran the Manticore TF in this last weekend to be the bar, as that was my fastest ever... by large margin. Datamining for average completion time is the way to go for completion to reward ratios, I would say.

Guide: Tanking, Wall of Fire Style (Updated for I19!), and the Four Rules of Tanking
Story Arc: Belated Justice, #88003
Synopsis: Explore the fine line between justice and vengeance as you help a hero of Talos Island bring his friend's murderer to justice.
Grey Pilgrim: Fire/Fire Tanker (50), Victory